Sunday, April 24, 2016

She will grab any vote

ASKED FOR HER THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER, CRANKY REPLIED, "EVERY VOTE FOR ME IS A VOTE THAT COUNTS, A WISE VOTE, A NEEDED VOTE, AN IMPORTANT VOTE. I WILL GLADLY ACCEPT ALL THE VOTES I WIN AND ALL THE VOTES I STEAL."

The United States still has 4,000
troops in Iraq, nearly five years after President George W. Bush agreed
with the then-Iraqi government that all U.S. troops would be withdrawn
by the end of 2011. President Obama pledged to end the war in Iraq as
part of his 2008 election campaign, a promise he has not fulfilled,
bending to pressure from the Pentagon and Washington’s other advocates
of a continued U.S. military presence.In principle, U.S. troops are in Iraq in the context of advising and
supplying Iraqi armed forces, not in a combat role. However, it emerged
last month that Marines maintain an independent fire base in northern
Iraq and are expected to play a critical role in carrying out the plan
of Iraqi forces to free Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, from
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria control. ISIS has held Mosul since June,
2014.

The Iraq War never ends.

Nor do Hillary Clinton's excuses for voting it and supporting it through 2007.

By contrast, Senator Bernie Sanders voted against it.

At a Baltimore rally today, Harper Neidig (THE HILL) reports,
Senator Bernie Sanders declared, "The most important foreign policy
debate in the modern history of
this country took place in 2002 over the war in Iraq. I listened very
carefully to what President Bush and Dick Cheney and the others had to
say. I did not believe them, I helped lead the opposition. Secretary
Clinton
heard the same evidence that I did; she voted for that war. As
secretary of State, she initiated and helped lead the effort to help
overthrow the government of Libya, which brought mass instability to
that region."

Thursday, War Hawk Hillary Diane appeared on ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA to sputter:

Well, I guess my-my greatest regret, uhm, was, uh, voting to give
President Bush authority in Iraq. Uhm, it did not turn out the way I
thought it would based on what he had said, uh, and I regret that. I've
said it was a mistake and, uh, obviously, uh, it's something I-I wish
hadn't turned out the way it did.

At the time of vote, Saddam Hussein had already agreed in principle
to a return of the weapons inspectors. His government was negotiating
with the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the
details, which were formally institutionalized a few weeks later.
(Indeed, it would have been resolved earlier had the United States not
repeatedly postponed a UN Security Council resolution in the hopes of
inserting language that would have allowed Washington to unilaterally
interpret the level of compliance.)Furthermore, if then-Senator Clinton’s desire was simply to push
Saddam into complying with the inspection process, she wouldn’t have
voted against the substitute Levin amendment,
which would have also granted President Bush authority to use force,
but only if Iraq defied subsequent UN demands regarding the inspections
process. Instead, Clinton voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution to
give Bush the authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of
his own choosing.In fact, unfettered large-scale weapons inspections had been going on
in Iraq for nearly four months at the time the Bush administration
launched the March 2003 invasion. Despite the UN weapons inspectors
having not found any evidence of WMDs or active WMD programs after
months of searching, Clinton made clear that the United States should
invade Iraq anyway. Indeed, she asserted that even though Saddam was in
full compliance with the UN Security Council, he nevertheless needed to
resign as president, leave the country, and allow U.S. troops to occupy
the country. “The president gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to avoid
war,” Clinton said in a statement,
“and the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this
ultimatum, understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.”

When Saddam refused to resign and the Bush administration launched the invasion, Clinton went on record
calling for “unequivocal support” for Bush’s “firm leadership and
decisive action” as “part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” She
insisted that Iraq was somehow still “in material breach of the relevant
United Nations resolutions” and, despite the fact that weapons
inspectors had produced evidence to the contrary, claimed the invasion
was necessary to “neutralize Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Julia Sharpe-Levine (HUFFINGTON POST) adds: Her assertion that her vote for the Iraq War was “the best decision I
[could’ve made] with the information I had” is deceitful considering
that prior to voting, she neglected to read the 92-page classified
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction circulated to the Senate for review by the Bush
administration. The NIE went into great detail about the objections
raised by the State Department and Department of Energy to claims of
nuclear-weapons in Iraq, and led multiple senators, including Bob Graham of Florida, to vote against the war resolution.

Bully Boy Bush tricked her, she whined this week.

But how stupid do you have to be to be in order to be tricked by Bully Boy Bush?

More to the point, how can you be 'tricked' when you don't even do the basic work required?

Hillary voted without doing the National Intelligence Estimate?

Well, no one's ever accused her of possessing an overabundance of intelligence.

No more
nonsense about being a touchy-feely progressive like Bernie Sanders.
It’s time for Hillary the Hawk to take charge and soar, preempting any
criticism by Republicans that she’ll be “weak” on defense.

But, tell me
again, how did America’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere
go for the United States? At least three trillion dollars lost, tens
of thousands of U.S. troops killed and wounded, hundreds of thousands of
“foreigners” killed and wounded, millions made refugees, and for what,
exactly?

Hillary the
Hawk wants to double-down on a losing hand. That’s neither “aggressive”
nor “tough”: It’s reckless and dumb. Worst of all, she’s playing with
our chips as well as the lives of our troops, not to mention the lives
of all those “foreigners” seeking shelter from American bombs and
bullets and drones. (But we have a word for them: collateral damage.)